Page 33 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Miller refuses.

Cohn fires off a telegram. “The minute we try to make the script pro-American, you pull out.”

The Hookis not picked up.

The “Red Scare” campaign, led by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy, the right-wing senator from Wisconsin, is intensifying the hunt for a perceived domestic Communist threat, insisting that Hollywood is teeming with Trots, Marxists, and Commies.

Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller are both staying at the Coldwater Canyon home of agent Charles Feldman of Famous Artists Corporation while they’re in Los Angeles. Feldman’s a producer on Kazan’s latest directorial project,A Streetcar Named Desire.

Marilyn’s often at the house, visiting Kazan and driving Miller to distraction.

Feldman throws a party in Miller’s honor. Marilyn sits beside Miller on a sofa, drinking champagne while he tickles the arches of her feet. By the time Kazan arrives, late, “the lovely light of desire in their eyes” is unmistakable.

“It was like running into a tree. You know, like a cool drink when you’ve had a fever,” Marilyn says of Miller. That hedoesn’tmake a pass at her only heightens the attraction.

Miller’s been married since 1940 to Mary Grace Slattery, who works as a proofreader atHarper’smagazine and with whom he has two children. He hasn’t broken his vows. Yet.

But the playwright keeps extending the length of his visit—until he runs out of excuses and must return to New York.

The sight of her was something like pain, and I knew that I must flee or walk into a doom beyond all knowing. With all her radiance,she was surrounded by darkness that perplexed meis Miller’s impression of Marilyn.I was retreating to the safety of morals, to be sure, but not necessarily truthfulness.

At the airport, he embraces Marilyn and gives her a goodbye kiss on the cheek. They promise to write.

Flying home, her scent still on my hands, I knew my innocence was technical merely, and the secret that I could lose myself in sensuality entered me like a radiating force.

Marilyn frames a photo of Arthur Miller and keeps it by her bedside.

CHAPTER 24

MARILYN MONROE IS BACKSTAGE at the 23rd Academy Awards in a sequined bouffant gown. Tonight, March 29, 1951,All About Eveis up for a record fourteen Oscars.

“The Oscars are something people yearn for, fight for, and cry for, and there is never an end to the competition until the tributes are finally won,” proclaims host Fred Astaire. As a nod to her supporting role in the film, Marilyn has been chosen to present the award for Best Sound Recording.

The picture has already won a statuette for Best Costume Design, but Marilyn is in tears over what’s happened to her dress: A large rip has appeared down the side of the strapless dress of layered tulle that she’s chosen from the Fox wardrobe department. Luckily, a seamstress rushes to repair it, and when Marilyn goes on stage to announce another ofAll About Eve’s eventual six Oscar wins, the audience of eighteen hundred in the Pantages Theatre is unaware of the near calamity.

Less than two weeks later, Marilyn wins a prize she’s covetedmore than any other—a full contract with 20th Century-Fox. Her weekly salary will start at $500 and rise in annual increments for a period of seven years. On April 11, 1951, she signs the document. It’s Johnny Hyde’s final gift to the woman he loved.

Darryl Zanuck walks through the Fox lot on a sunny afternoon in mid-June. Folded under his arm is today’sNew York Times. “Marilyn Monroe is superb as the secretary” inAs Young as You Feel,the film critic praises.

The man in charge is confused and irritated at the same time. Is he the only person who doesn’t see it? The only one who finds her delivery annoying and her acting stiff?

Sid Skolsky’s latest column describes Marilyn’s feat of silencing a film crew simply by appearing on set in a bathing suit. Another report touts the blonde as “one of the brightest up-and-coming actresses.”

Zanuck passes the mailroom just as a delivery boy hefts a huge brown sack over his shoulder.

“That’s a lot of mail,” he jokes.

“It’s been like this for weeks,” puffs the boy, throwing the sack down on the floor. “And they’re all for Marilyn Monroe.”

“All of them?”

“She gets over three thousand letters a week. More than everyone else combined.”

Zanuck invites Marilyn to the Fox Publicity and Sales party at the Café de Paris, where the studio’s most important executives toast June Haver, Betty Grable, and Gregory Peck.

Marilyn arrives late. Whether by design, or nerves, or both,she seems determined to put on a show. Her black strapless gown is in high contrast with her skin, a luminous shade of marble white that perfectly matches her ever-more lightened hair.

She pauses at the door, pursing her scarlet lips. Holding the room. Fox president Spyros Skouras breaks the spell. He rises from the table in his tuxedo and offers her the seat next to his.

---